Green A City

The Impact of "Boomburbs" on Metro Sustainability

The Brookings Institute recently released a new book, Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities, and we were astounded by the hyper growth of many places that few have heard of nationally.

What's troubling is the negative impact these cities will have on the best efforts of urban centers to green their communities.

Located in more than 25 metro areas in the US, so-called boomburbs have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in size since the 1970s or 1980s, with metros such as Phoenix having as much 42 percent of its total population residing in these new clusters.

Photo source: Wikipedia

While the SustainLane US City Rankings of the largest 50 US cities included only two of these so-called Boomburbs--Mesa, Arizona          and Arlington, Texas--these and other cities such as North Las Vegas, Nevada; Hialeah, Florida; Peoria, Arizona; and Chesapeake, Virginia will be truly pushing the limit in impacting smart growth planning approaches for water, natural resources, air quality and traffic impacts.

The problem is many of these boomburbs lack city planning, and rely instead on housing developers for master plans, which may or may not be cobbled together to form the basis for transportation and resource planning.

Worse,  say authors Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy, boomburbs are quickly leapfrogging into cheaper agricultural land beyond metro cities, with even newer "mini boomburbs" that push into "increasingly remote locations and use legislation intended to promote rural economic growth to steal businesses from older, more developed suburbs."

Examples are provided of cities such as Frisco, Texas, which is outside Dallas-Forth Worth, poaching business from older Texas boomburbs such as Plano and Irvine.

"Boomberbs are truly 'driving cities'," say the authors. "Not only is public transit use low, but also average travel time to work is high." It's not surprising that Arlington, Texas (pop. 360,000), was the only city in the SustainLane US City Rankings to have 0 percent of its population commuting on public transit or biking to work.

The authors report on "freeway exit economies," where a community's economic growth potential is measured by the number of freeway exits and miles of freeway-facing frontage road it has. That's so it can pencil out how much land it can develop with low-slung strip malls, big-box retailers, corporate campuses and massive residential housing projects.

Boomburbs never mentions the environmental impacts boomburbs foist upon neighboring communities, regions and states (the book and supporting study were funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation).

But there is one glimmer of hope: most mayors and city councils of boomburbs are pursuing light rail as a solution to the congestion, air pollution, inconvenience and the resulting lack of prestige these mushrooming "driving cities" and their 10 million inhabitants are experiencing.

Bike Capital of the World?

We repost Warren's June 14th article from WorldChanging this week. -Editor

The Future of Carbon-Free Transport: Groningen, Netherlands

The future of carbon-free transport lives strong in Groningen. This Dutch city of 185,000 proves that bicycle transportation can reign supreme: people there make about 150,000 trips by bicycle every day.

Bicycles and pedestrians entirely rule the medieval-era city hub, cruising along on car-free dedicated pathways and short cuts with no traffic signals in some instances. But people also commute on bikes in large numbers from suburban housing spread out around the city to downtown jobs, via a ring-and-spoke network of paths. Overall, 37 percent of area commutes are made on bikes.

Boasting an official town bicycle planner, Groningen has created an infrastructure it refers to "continuous and integral," which includes massive surface and underground bicycle parking facilities, dedicated bike paths, and two-way bike lanes even on one-way auto streets.

Since the early 1980s, 30 city bicycle parking facilities have been developed, including one underground facility at the central train station that sells bikes, repairs bikes and offers valet and secure parking for more than 4,000 bikes. Parking is financed through a low-cost annual membership program that costs $50 a year, while bike valet positions create significant numbers of jobs at the public parking facilities and also at 15 local schools.

Bike parking and paths, however, are only the physical manifestation of the careful cycling cultural nourishment that has been provided by city leaders collaborating with citizens. In 1986 Groningen developed what is believed to be Europe’s first dedicated bike policy document, which focused on a broad spectrum of bike transportation and awareness programs. Educational programs now include teaching the health and economic benefits of cycling.

"We think we can boost the numbers of cyclists even higher," said bicycle planner Cor van der Klaauw on Josh Hart’s Car Free Blog. "We have programs to introduce new immigrants to cycling. Many of them came from places where the car is the ultimate status symbol. We need to show them that in Holland, they can get around very easily by bicycle, status symbols aside."

Groningen's bicycle planning has not occurred in a vacuum, but rather complements an integrated scheme that includes low-priced parking facilities for cars, strong public transport and careful public transit linkages between car parking areas and centers for employment and education. With these amenities, cars use, especially in the city center, was successfully restricted without impacting local business.

Other so-called northern European "cycling cities" may be more known (Amsterdam; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Ghent, Belgium) but none can match Groningen for its complete vision and high rate of daily velocipedic participation.

The Netherlands averages a 26 percent national cycling rate, Denmark scores just under 20 percent and Germany achieves about 10 percent, according to a report published by Dutch research group Fietsberaad (Number 7).

While bicycles in the US currently comprise only 0.4 percent of all commuter trips, some North American cities are actively promoting bicycle transportation--through planning dedicated mapped routes and facilities--as a way of reducing global climate change-causing carbon emissions. San Francisco, for instance, has announced a goal of having bicycle trips make up 10 percent of all city trips by 2010.

What’s behind the high rates in Europe, besides the history of bicycle use and culture? According to Fietsbaraad: "Accepting the cyclist as a 'normal' traffic participant with equal rights in the '50s and '60s has been a crucial factor; (so has) the realization of a motor car infrastructure (that) is not at the expense of the cyclist….”

Warren Karlenzig is Chief Strategy Officer at SustainLane, where he directs the company’s US city rankings, and SustainLane Government, an open-source best practices sustainability knowledgebase for state and local government officials and their constituents. Warren is lead author of the newly released How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane U.S. City Rankings (New Society Publishers). His blog is www.greenacity.com

New York City's Small Carbon Footprint

New York released details of its carbon inventory Friday, and its emissions were just under one percent of the nation's, with about 2.7 percent of the national population of 300 million. That means the city emits only about one-third as much as the rest of the nation does on average, mostly because of its strong city and metro region public transit.

The Big Apple's mixed-use zoning, allowing businesses and residents and retail to occupy the same neighborhoods, also contributed to its low-carbon output, as people have no-carbon options besides public transit--you can actually walk or bike to get things done and to go punch the clock.

The new office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability (what an awesome moniker!) was the agency behind the inventory, and the city worked in conjunction with the organization Local Governments for Sustainability, or ICLEI, in what was described by Mayor Bloomberg as, "the most detailed inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in US history."

I might beg to differ considering the detailed greenhouse gas inventories Seattle and San Francisco have undertaken in the recent past, but it's surely the largest in US history because of the sheer size of NYC.

The inventory will serve as a benchmark for the 30 percent carbon emissions reduction goal by 2030 that Bloomberg announced in December.

Buildings produced 79 percent of the carbon emissions, which underscores the importance of green building measures in combatting global climate change.

Spotlight: Fairfax, California

Sometimes you need to look no further than your own backyard to find inspiration. I live in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Next door to our town is Fairfax, California. Last night I got together with Fairfax's mayor, Larry Bragman, and a few others from that town of about 8,000.

We talked about Fairfax's significant sustainability factors: it's one of the few towns with no permitting fee for solar installations; it helped ban herbicide use on its neighboring watershed a few years back; and its 30 or so vibrant local businesses are almost all locally owned or operated--no chains in town that I know of.

People are so attached to their local shops that when a devastating flood ripped through this valley north of Mt. Tamalpais on December 31, 2005, citizens put together a massive fundraiser with local musicians, food and drink (there's a great local brewpub, Iron Springs Brewery) to help keep impacted businesses flourishing.

Fairfax also is home to two heavily solar-powered public schools, White Hill Middle School and Manor Elementary School, the latter which has a nationally awarded Green Team 4th grade teacher, Laura Honda.

In transportation, Fairfax was the partial birthplace of the mountain bicycle during the 1970s (co-inventors Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze still live here); it has a massive bike-to-school and walk-to-school contingent that was co-sponsored by a local volunteer group of parents called "An Inconvenient Group," and has more plans for being a national model for transportation by bicycle and foot, through the national Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program.

The town has a wonderful farmers market that features locally grown produce from within the county and state, and it has one of the nation's best food markets, featuring mostly organic and sustainably produced food, called The Good Earth. The Good Earth also prepares and provides organic and locally grown food for a number of the county's school lunch programs.

If you're good, you'll get organic and locally made ice cream from The Scoop for desert, which features locally grown blackberries and strawberries mixed with organic milk from free-ranging Straus dairy herds in West Marin.

Fairfax knows how to be green and have a good time, with four clubs supporting live music every night of the week, and parades galore. This Saturday will be the Little League Opening Day parade, where the younguns from West Marin Little League walk--or skip--down main street in their uniforms, and then in summer comes the human-powered parade.

The townsfolk have put up signs recognizing local steelhead trout populations in their streams and have replanted native plants around the schools and baseball field.

Paradise? Take a look in your own backyard or alley and see what you can dream up to make your community healthier, more sustainable and worth living in.

Top Ten Green Cities: Review of "The Climate Code" Episode on SustainLane's US City Rankings

The Weather Channel's "The Climate Code" covered in-depth The SustainLane US City Rankings yesterday, featuring reports from the top ten cities out of the largest 50 US cities SustainLane ranked in 2006. Look for How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings from New Society Press in April with expanded and updated information on the rankings.

Yesterday (rebroadcast Saturday, January 27 at 3, 5 and 11 p.m. Eastern), we heard about the following cities:

1. Portland, Oregon

Portland provides a great example of what cities, citizens and businesses can do together to improve their quality of life along with the local economy.

Once having some of the nation's poorest air quality, Portland now has some of the best air and tap water quality nationwide, along with free public transit downtown, the highest bike-to-work rate, the most LEED-certified buildings, strong local food and an emerging alternative fuels economy. Plus the real estate community has backed the first residential home multiple-listing service with green features in history.

2. San Francisco

San Francisco is a close competitor with Portland for managing sustainability programs that help provide the nation's best solid waste diversion rate (recycling and commercial composting), and feature bold projects for solar and tidal energy generation. San Francisco's housing affordability remains an issue that forces many to commute long distances into the city. Fortunately the Bay Area features strong public transportation to help make that commuting less polluting and congested.

3. Seattle

Mayor Greg Nickels, who appeared on "The Climate Code," is a strong national advocate for climate change policy, clean technologies, green building and effective sustainability policy management. Seattle, its port authority and King County, have been teaming up on biodiesel ferry and bus initiatives, while the city has strongly pushed for restoring native forests in the Emerald City.

4. Chicago

My hometown, and each time I visit, I'm more wowed by what I see under Mayor Daley's leadership. Mayor Daley, who spoke on "The Climate Code" about wanting to go from #4 in the SustainLane rankings to #1, has been greening streets, freeways and even abandoned industrial sites.

Chicago blends the aesthetic with the technical aspects of sustainability: the world's largest green roof at Millennium Park underlies a Frank Gehry-designed bandshell, all part of an ongoing study to reduce urban heat-island effect.

5. Oakland, California

Oakland is a great "sleeper" in the top ten, with growing public transit use, policy supporting more local food, renewable energy and a move toward energy security. New Mayor Ron Dellums is instituting a "green collar" jobs program for youth and low-income workers, so that the clean tech jobs the city is trying to lure can equally benefit professionals, skilled people in the trades, unskilled workers and students.

6. New York City

With the country's best urban public transit system, New York is not resting on its laurels. Mayor Bloomberg is putting his weight behind city appointments, committees and processes that are making a sustainability plan a reality in 2007. Out of such activities, look for the city to assume a leadership role in developing alternative fueled vehicles, renewable energy (including tidal) and Gotham-scaled green buildings.

7. Boston

The Bean goes Green. Boston is poised to become the leading city for green building with its new zoning requiring that all buildings over 50,000 sq. feet be LEED (the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. Add that to high renewable energy use, great public transit, walkability and low sprawl, and you get a promising future. Weakness: recycling. 

8. Philadelphia

Philly's #8 has been a surprise to some, but the city is a great model for local urban food, with strong networks of farmers markets and community gardens. The city also is riding a wave of interest in sustainability from citizen groups, business (including the local Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), and just plain folks who have been attending large planning and visioning meetings.  From that process the city needs a sustainability plan that city officials buy into, along with more recycling and renewable energy.

9. Denver

When cities claim that they can't build public transit like that of such "older cities" in the top ten, I always point to Denver. The city and 30 surrounding towns in 2004 passed a ballot measure to build out more than 100 miles of new light rail and other new public transit lines.

Mayor Hickenlooper has made sustainability the foundation for the city's future, through economic development that will be integrated with the new public transit. The skinny: 4x current public transit ridership in 15 years and a vital new American city.

10. Minneapolis

Minneapolis wants to increase its energy and food security, as Mayor R.T. Rybak described on "The Climate Code" yesterday. The city will continue being the leader in renewable energy for Midwestern cities, while bolstering farmers markets and community gardens (it's already #1 in that area), and green building.